The International Monetary Fund has said Nigeria needs to invest $100bn in its road network to improve accessibility to all regions.

The IMF stated this in its report, titled ‘Nigeria: Technical assistance report – additional spending toward Sustainable Development Goals’.

It said Nigeria will have to invest a significant share of its Gross Domestic Product to improve road access. While construction costs vary by type and region estimate an average cost per kilometer of about $550,000.

The IMF estimated that on top of the two per cent of GDP per year on new road infrastructure, Nigeria would have to invest at least up to 0.5 per cent of GDP per year in refurbishing and modernising its existing road infrastructure.

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The International Monetary Fund has pledged to support governments in adopting measures to fight corruption.

It vowed to do so by publishing procurement contracts, commissioning independent audits and stepping up anti-money laundering measures.

Managing Director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva while speaking in an interview with Transparency International described corruption as a debilitating force that targets the poor in the economy.

She said Corruption is a corrosive force that hits the poor and the most vulnerable people the hardest and it is tragic when government action is needed to save lives and protect livelihoods but money is squandered rather than deployed for what is their priority.

She said the IMF will continue to support governments in their efforts to adopt a range of measures from publishing procurement contracts online, to commissioning independent audits to improve transparency and public financial management to set up anti-corruption and anti-money laundering measures.

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The latest data from the Central Bank of Nigeria have shown that the country’s foreign reserves have commenced a downward trend, dropping by $129.83m in one week.

The reserves, which stood at $36.57bn as of June 3, fell to $36.45bn on June 11.

According to the CBN, the reserves had maintained a steady rise at a level of $33.52bn as of April 30, 2020 before commencing its downward trend in June.

The reserves had earlier slipped into a decline after hitting a high of $45.17bn on June 11, 2019, losing $11bn to close at $33.89bn as of April 28.

According to the International Monetary Fund, the country’s main export commodity, oil, represents around 90 per cent of its exports.

The CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele headwinds to growth remained the legacy issues of the persistent infrastructural and security challenges.

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The Minister of Power, Sale Mamman, has insisted that the new increment on electricity tariff would take off in July.

He stated this on Tuesday at the Investigative Public Hearing on Power Sector Recovery Plan and the impact of COVID-19 pandemic organised by the Senate Committee on Power.

Mamman said COVID-19 pandemic had affected the laid, out plan for the repositioning of the electricity market towards financial sustainability under the Power Sector Recovery Programme.

According to him, the regulator, following the completion of public consultation on tariff review, has initially planned to conduct a tariff review in April 2020.

He however said due to the COVID-19 outbreak and customer apathy, the proposed tariff review was delayed by three months.

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Southeast Asian ride-hailing and payments firm Grab on Tuesday said it would lay off more than 300 employees due to the impact of novel coronavirus, in the latest setback to major backer SoftBank Group Corp.

CEO Anthony Tan told staff in a note which was shared with Reuters the loss-making company would cut just under 5% of its headcount, or about 360 employees. The company had earlier asked employees to take voluntary unpaid leave.

A spokeswoman said Singapore-based Grab, which is active in eight countries, did not face capital constraints and would be sunsetting non-core projects, consolidating teams and pivoting to focus on deliveries.

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The dollar sold off in early European trade Tuesday, as the Federal Reserve’s move to start purchasing U.S. corporate bonds boosted sentiment at the expense of safe havens.

At 2:55 AM ET (0655 GMT), the dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six other currencies, was down 0.2% at 96.498. EUR/USD gained 0.2% to 1.1340, while the risk-sensitive AUD/USD rose 0.1% to 0.6924.

Late Monday the U.S. central bank flew to the rescue once more, stating it will start purchasing investment grade U.S. corporate bonds in a bid to secure companies' access to cash and ensure credit market liquidity.

The Fed’s Main Street lending program and expanded bond purchase scheme should help support risk sentiment with Jerome Powell trooping to the Senate to give testimony later on Tuesday.

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Indonesia's finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati on Tuesday said Indonesia's plan to impose 10% value-added tax (VAT) on digital services offered by technology giants is not the subject of a trade investigation by the United States.

The U.S. Trade Representative's office earlier this month said it was investigating digital services taxes (DSTs) being adopted or considered by several countries, such as Britain, Italy and Indonesia.

Indrawati told a streamed briefing that the VAT plan is not the subject of the USTR letter. It took issue with plans for corporate tax, which remains a subject of discussions led by the OECD.

Indrawati said Indonesia would not impose DST or corporate income tax before the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and G20 countries agree a global standard for such taxes, likely later this year.

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Apple has said that its App Store ecosystem facilitated half a trillion dollars of trade in 2019.

The firm said more than 85% of that figure occurred via transactions from which it did not take a commission.

The announcement comes at a time Apple and other US tech giants are facing increased anti-competition scrutiny.

A leading developer has also called on the iPhone-maker to lower the fees it charges, ahead of its annual developers' conference next week.

An Apple representative told the BBC that it was proud of the commerce that it had enabled and welcomed scrutiny of its App Store.

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Research suggests that Photo-sharing app Instagram is set to overtake Twitter as a news source.

The 2020 Reuters Institute Digital News report found the use of Instagram for news had doubled since 2018.

The trend is strongest among young people. It said nearly a quarter of UK 18-24-year-olds used Instagram as a source of news about coronavirus.

Just 26% of people said they trusted social media as a source of information about the virus

National governments and news organisations, by contrast, were both trusted by about 59% of respondents.

Instagram is now used by more than a third of all people who answered the survey, and two-thirds of under-25s. And 11% use it for news, putting it just one point behind Twitter.

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The European Union imposed tariffs on Chinese producers of glass fibre fabric in China and Egypt after finding they had benefited from unfair subsidies that allowed them to sell at excessively low prices in Europe.

The European Commission, which oversees trade policy in the 27 EU countries, in a report published on Monday said that the companies had received preferential lending, artificially cheap land and electricity and various grants and tax breaks.

The companies include two Egyptian subsidiaries of state-owned China National Building Materials Group Corp (CNBM), marking the EU’s first look into whether Chinese aid is unfairly helping Chinese companies based abroad.

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